


Forgetting

by homoeroticmisogyny



Series: press f to pay respects [3]
Category: Homoerotic Misogyny (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I contain multitudes, Revenge, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Yes both of them, Zoe POV, issax, or if you don't i mean they'll still be there, shakespeare references if you look, slutrio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 20:53:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30044577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homoeroticmisogyny/pseuds/homoeroticmisogyny
Summary: It was an accident!Issa told her, and isn’t that what Lucy said? So many accidents lately. A string of nasty luck. So many secrets in this school, so many students with something to hide.-Zoe doesn't know how to move on, or who to trust.
Relationships: Audrey Riverdale-Kuragin/Elena Kuragina (Homoerotic Misogyny)/Isabel "Issa" Banquo (implied), Isabel "Issa" Banquo/Audrey Riverdale-Kuragin, Isabel "Issa" Banquo/Max Theodore Enjolras (implied), Zoe Messina & Audrey Riverdale-Kuragin, Zoe Messina & Isabel "Issa" Banquo
Series: press f to pay respects [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206863
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	Forgetting

“She’s gonna be okay,” Zoe told them. Why did she say that?

Two girls on a roof and one on the ground and Zoe lied. There’s a lot of that going around, it seems. Two girls on a roof holding one another and two girls in the ground, and when they meet the club has empty seats and everything is wrong, but no one will admit it, no one will say the words.

Silence is bitter against Zoe’s tongue and she breaks with it, quietly: “Who’s in charge now?”

Someone has to take responsibility.

No one looks up. Staring at laps and hands and shoes, shuffling their feet and twisting their fingers and no one willing to step forward and say,  _ Me, I’ll do it, I can fix us. _ Maybe they’re unfixable. Maybe some broken things should be left alone. This is a room full of absence. There’s jagged edges all over the place.

Issa sniffles and Zoe sees the look of venom Audrey shoots her way. What happened on the roof? What happened in the bathroom? What happens behind locked doors late at night, when Emma’s not in the dorm?

“Issa,” Zoe says. Issa startles. “I think it should be Issa.”

Someone has to take responsibility. Someone has been lying. Someone has taken the fall and someone is going to. It’s dangerous to be up so high. Zoe remembers looking over the edge, stomach churning, head spinning. It’s so easy to fall from the top. Someone has to be in charge, someone has to break the silence, someone has to do  _ something… _ Helplessness, like silence, like grief, is bitter.

Quiet murmurs around the room. No one is disagreeing. There’s been enough conflict, hasn’t there? Things have been moving at dizzying speeds, but the trouble is, spinning in circles doesn’t make anything stop. The club is off-kilter now, missing its anchors, off balance and toppling over the edge— 

Zoe won’t think about it. Absence is louder than presence and she could swear she feels breath on the back of her neck, so she won’t look back.

“Okay,” says Issa, and she puts her head down on the desk. If things were normal, someone would ask her  _ what’s wrong _ or pat her back or bring her a water bottle. If things were normal, Elena would roll her eyes at the melodrama of it all, and Lucy would say something to make everyone smile, and Zoe wouldn’t feel like she’s going to be sick.

She can’t let go of the vertigo from that moment. Hearing Issa’s screams and running to her, already knowing, somehow.  _ She has to be okay! _ she told Zoe, and Audrey was quiet. Audrey’s always quiet, now. She has been for a while, ever since. There’s no need to put words to the end of that. There’s only one  _ ever since _ in this club.

When Zoe finally leaves the room on shaking legs, Dieke’s crying in the hallway again. She grabs Zoe’s wrist. “Why’d you do that?” they ask. Their face is wet with tears; one, small and delicate, hangs from her chin, not quite dripping yet. Zoe stares at it. Waiting. “Why  _ her?” _

It hasn’t let go. Zoe shrugs. “Why not her?”

Dieke shakes her head and the tear loses its grip, splashes to the floor inaudibly, so small, so insignificant, so easy to lose sight of; Zoe blinks and can’t find it anymore against the grain of the floor.

From up on the roof, people on the ground look like ants. That’s what they tell you when you’re young. When you’re at the top, everyone else looks small. Seventeen is so young.

Zoe hadn’t been to the roof before. It’s off limits for students. It’s not a big space, not a very comfortable space; accessed through a window, not wholly level, but it’s enough that certain kinds of students will gather to sit. One or two at a time. Why were the three of them up there?

“Why?” Dieke repeats, and Zoe flinches.

It’s the only question left, of course. Except for  _ how. _ How could this have happened and how could they let this keep happening and how could they do it?

_ It was an accident! _ Issa told her, and isn’t that what Lucy said? So many accidents lately. A string of nasty luck. So many secrets in this school, so many students with something to hide.

* * *

Atrox is quiet at night, cold and dark and empty, and Zoe heads up to the roof.

Last year, this would have been a small rebellion, just going through the window to a space officially designated out of bounds. Last year, she would have needed to hold someone’s hand as she stepped out. Last year, the roof would have meant nothing. A bit of fun. Harmless. The thrill of wrongdoing without any stakes.

It’s a long way down.

Zoe sits. She should be in pajamas by now; Macy’s been asleep for hours. But it’s impossible to go to bed. If Zoe stops moving she won’t get up again. Like a shark, or like falling. Lucy lay so still on the ground. So Zoe’s in her uniform, like any other day, and the night air is chilly against her forearms, raising goosebumps, making her shiver, but she won’t roll down her sleeves. It’s just like any other day. Nothing’s different. Nothing’s changed.

Her hands are cold.

They used to be roommates. Lucy and Elena. Co-founders of the club, bunking together, swapping jokes and making flyers. Maybe the room’s cursed. Maybe they all are.

Even the wind has died. Silence again. Bitterness on the back of her tongue.

“What are you doing here?” someone says, and Zoe twists to see who it is, thinking wildly of a name she knows is wrong, but she isn’t even sure which.

It’s Max. “Sorry,” he says. They’re all sorry. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Can I…?”

“Of course,” says Zoe, moving over to make room. Carefully. There is only so much empty space here, on the roof, in the school, in the club, in between the words they say.

There aren’t any words to offer one another. Max looks over the edge and Zoe wants to scream, wants to grab him away and yell at him to be careful, to be safe, to keep away from things that will hurt. Max smiled when Issa was nominated. Zoe wonders how Audrey feels about that.

She bites her tongue and now the bitter silence in her mouth tastes like blood.

“You found her,” Max says, hoarse like he’s been crying. Zoe pictures the dorm, Issa in one bed and Max in the other, and she doesn’t have to ask why Max left. Why he’s out here with her. The stillness of her room can’t have been as bad as the suppressed noises in his. “Right? That was you?”

“Yes.” And which does he mean? The one on the ground or the one looking down? Two looking down. Audrey was there too; Zoe’s not sure why she keeps forgetting that. It’s just that Audrey’s been so quiet, ever since. Ever since. Like without Elena she doesn’t know how to hold herself or talk to anyone, doesn’t know how to  _ be. _

“I’m sorry,” says Max, and he  _ looks _ sorry. Zoe doesn’t know how to trust anymore, because everything’s broken. Bones and promises and people.

Zoe shrugs. What is there to say?

* * *

It’s 7pm and it’s 3am and it’s 11am and it doesn’t matter at all. People keep talking to Zoe and she’s not listening to any of the words they say to her. She sits in class and she shows up to the club and she goes back to the roof and she  _ watches. _ Bitterness on her tongue and mistrust behind her eyes.

“I’m worried about you,” Wren says, and Zoe doesn’t answer.

“It was an accident,” Lucy said.

“You should get some rest,” Percy says, and Zoe ignores his offer to share his room. She doesn’t want to bunk somewhere else. She doesn’t want to  _ sleep. _

“You can’t even control this club,” Elena said.

“We’re here to talk if you want,” Theo says, and Orlando nods, and Zoe shakes her head.

“It was an accident,” Issa said. She says it again and again and Zoe stops hearing it, hears only  _ She’s gonna be okay, _ hears a scream and then a pause and then a scream.

“We have to move on.” That’s what people say, isn’t it? The club moves on. Zoe moves on. But she does not forget.

* * *

“It’ll make you feel better,” Leo’s saying.

Issa’s eyes well with tears. “What’s done cannot be undone,” she mumbles, and Audrey swats at her shoulder.

“Shut  _ up!” _ Audrey says, and they all look up as Zoe enters the room. She waves, and silence takes hold of them once more.

* * *

Zoe’s on the roof again. She comes out here almost every night, just to get away from all the noise. There’s a comfort to bitterness sometimes, if it’s the only thing that’s familiar.

Sometimes others join her, later. They never come together; theirs is a group of solitary creatures now. Splintered off one by one. Staring each other down wondering who will blink first, who will be next. Blood for blood for blood for blood and it never stops and Zoe’s head is spinning and it’s not safe to be dizzy on a rooftop. It’s not safe.

Tonight it’s Emma, tucking long legs beneath herself as she sits, and she looks down like they all do. “Horrible,” they murmur, and Zoe doesn’t have an answer for that.

Seventeen. First year, second year, first in the club and first gone. Seventeen is so young and Emma knows that, which means there’s nothing to be said, but silence is so bitter and this school is beyond comfort.

“How’s Audrey doing?” Zoe asks.

Emma shrugs. Last year, this would have been the time to complain about their roommate, to say something sarcastic, to turn the question into a joke. Last year, Zoe wouldn’t have asked. Why would she? But that’s not the  _ why _ of this year. Ever since.

Zoe wants to ask if Issa’s been stopping by as usual. But it wouldn’t be  _ as usual _ with only two. Those three were so close, Audrelenissa, one lovably irritating and irritatingly lovable person, and now three is two and there’s a crack in everything and neither of them seems like a person anymore, not really. Too quiet, too sad, and not enough: too few, too  _ small. _ So she doesn’t ask. Pulls the night air closer like a blanket and doesn’t ask if Audrey cries at night, if that’s why Emma’s here, if anything will ever feel right again.

* * *

There’s one spot on campus Zoe knows Lucy loved, beneath the branches of the huge willow, and so when she spots a lone figure sitting beneath it her heart stutters.

It’s a funny thing, the heart, isn’t it, and violent too — muscle and electricity and constant, frenetic motion, throwing itself against the cage of the ribs, squeezing like a fist. The ancient Egyptians believed it housed the thoughts and soul; Aristotle called it the center of vitality. Medieval Europe accepted it as the seat of all emotions, the root. Something has to be responsible, even if it’s only another symptom; even if it’s all the same cycle and the blood just goes around and around, the heart clenching tight like it’s trying to hold on, and never missing a beat, never forgetting.

Zoe knows better than antiquity, knows that the heart’s just another organic machine and that memory’s stored in the brain’s neurons, but the club in all its messiness is kept in her heart, or the other way around maybe; maybe the club holds her heart, and her chest has been empty for weeks.

But it isn’t Lucy, of course. When Zoe approaches, it’s only Issa. Issa, alone; Issa, lonely.

They haven’t spoken since Zoe nominated her to head the club. They aren’t speaking now. Issa twists her fingers together around something small and red, a strawberry maybe, and Zoe takes a seat beside her and Audrey’s nowhere in sight. Issa’s humming something under her breath, but Zoe can’t place it.

“She was angry,” Issa whispers.

Zoe doesn’t look at her. She looks out at the branches around them, at the grounds and the students walking past who don’t know or care what’s happened to them. “With you?”

Silence, for a long time.

“Water can wear away rock,” says Issa, apropos of apparently nothing. “Smooth it to nothing.”

Is that what she’s been trying to do, Zoe wonders: erode the stones in their throats and stomachs by sheer effort of salt water, soften the ground and the landing, weep away the hardness encasing Audrey in silent stone?

“Nothing,” Issa repeats when Zoe doesn’t respond. She shivers. Her strawberry’s been pressed into pulp, bright juice staining her fingers, her skirt. Sweet and ruined. “I loved her, you know.”

“I know,” says Zoe, but she isn’t sure if they’re talking of the dead or the living.

“I loved them.”

And it should have been enough, it should have kept them all safe in the heart of the club, but there’s blood going around and even when there’s conversation it’s layered over silence bitter and aching like the dead of night, and Zoe’s heart is so tired. She can’t keep playing the adult. Someone has to be responsible, but does it have to be her?

Issa stands, pulls a leaf from the branches above her, and hands it to Zoe. She takes it unthinkingly, automatically, so it turns out trust is a matter of muscle memory. The heart is a muscle, too.

“Will you come again?” Issa’s gaze is piercing, sharper than before, pinning Zoe to the trunk of the willow. “Will she—?”

But before Zoe can think of how to put words to impossibility, Issa’s parted the curtain of leaves and left, as abrupt as every exit is.

* * *

The clubroom is too quiet even when they’re all present. Tal will hesitate a second too long when calling names or reading back the minutes, or Ava will count the chairs and bring too many, or, or, or; and it never stops, they never get used to it, it’s too much loss too quickly to process, every day a new reminder, and they never reach acceptance, they never hit the floor, nothing’s ever finished and it can’t feel like an ending when everything’s still in motion.

Zoe watches Audrey: Audrey, who’s hardly said a word in weeks; Audrey, who hasn’t gotten a full sentence out  _ ever since; _ Audrey, who has lost all her mirth, who no longer provides flashes of merriment to set the table on a roar. Max and Wren start a debate about Andrei, and Zoe watches Audrey, who says nothing. Audrey’s rubbing her hands against her arms, up and down like she’s cold, but it’s over twenty degrees in here; even with a skirt that short, it shouldn’t be cold.

Someone has to be responsible.

* * *

Still, Zoe’s surprised.

* * *

It’s a small noise that alerts her. Just a gasp, just a cry quickly muffled. Such a little thing to change everything, again, and isn’t that always the way.

The clubroom door is locked and it shouldn’t be: something terrible is happening behind it, and Zoe can’t get in to stop it. She knocks before she can think better of it, but there’s no reply, she jiggles the doorknob but nothing, she calls to whoever’s inside but they don’t come to the door, and whatever’s going on is not going to stop because none of them ever do, blood for blood and round and round and when will the heart run dry, when will the bodies finally hit the ground, when will the buried lie down and be still, when will the breathing be able to sleep at night, or even just close their eyes without seeing dizzying heights and broken bottles and empty chairs?

Someone has to be responsible and there’s no one else around. Zoe runs.

She bumps into Max in the hallway, literally, smashes into him and makes them both stumble.

“Sorry,” says Max, déjà vu as usual.

“Max,” Zoe says, frantic, “you have to get help, I think something’s wrong. The clubroom’s locked, who has a key?”

He opens his mouth to ask a follow-up question but Zoe shushes him and shoves his shoulder,  _ go please hurry I’ll tell you later please just go quickly find someone who can help, _ and it’s probably too late already.

So Max heads off and Zoe returns to the door to try it again and it’s still locked, of course, but there’s more than one way to get into a classroom in this school. The entrance to the secret passage is too far away to try now; by the time Zoe gets to the other end of school and back whatever’s  _ wrong _ in there will be over, she can feel it. That leaves the windows.

The windows. Zoe closes her eyes. It’s only one story above ground level; it won’t be so bad. It’s only one story up and no one dies from falling twenty feet.

And then she’s running again, trying to get to the other side of the room, the outside wall. Through a window like a nighttime ritual, familiar. Fingers finding handholds in the bricks and shoes finding footholds and  _ don’t look down, _ and if she dies like this no one will know to look here. If she dies they’ll be down another member. If she dies whatever is in the clubroom will keep happening and someone has to be responsible, someone has to stop the cycle, someone has to have a beating heart and break the bitter silence or else die trying.

No one dies of falling twenty feet. Don’t look down. Up here, the wind is chilly on Zoe’s arms and if her fingers go numb she’ll slip, so don’t think about cold hands, don’t look at the ground, don’t think about what’s waiting inside. Just keep moving along the wall and pray no one locked the window.

It’s not locked. Zoe doesn’t know how she manages to get it open without plummeting downward, but it’s open and she throws herself through. She gets to her feet.

Audrey has her hands locked around Issa’s throat.

Zoe blinks, but she’s not imagining it. This is a nightmare that doesn’t go away in the daylight. Audrey, taller than ever, enormous above Issa on her knees; Issa’s crying soundlessly, fingers scrabbling at Audrey’s shirt hem as her eyes bulge and her cheeks redden; Audrey’s white knuckles against the paleness of skin deprived of blood and air; Zoe sees all this in an instant and it’s so  _ visceral _ that she can’t make a sound for a moment, and by then Issa’s hands are falling limply to her sides, and Audrey drops her.

Silence. Audrey draws breath. Zoe screams before she can.

And the heart is a violent thing but lungs are not made for fighting even if throats are made for rawness; a scream is only as loud as the heart releasing it, and there’s only so much empty space inside a person, even if there’s two people — three — carved out of them. Zoe runs out of air and the room rings with the echo of it and with the silence after, and her chest hurts; is this what it’s like to suffocate?

Audrey’s speechless, stepping back as though in dawning horror, staring, staring, and Zoe scrambles forward to the body on the floor that used to be Issa.

A pulse, she thinks hollowly, and holds her fingers to Issa’s neck; the skin there is cold, too cold considering it’s just had a pair of hands pressed against it. Audrey’s hands must be freezing. Issa is cold and everything is happening too fast. Zoe can’t find a pulse and Issa is limp in her arms and the whole thing is too horrible. It’s too much. This can’t be happening.

Audrey hasn’t moved.

Zoe looks up at her. Is this Audrey? She looks smaller than usual, on her own, without her constant companions at her elbows. Smaller than ever. Deflated.

“I didn’t…” Audrey whispers, as though Zoe hasn’t seen her do it. “I didn’t think — Oh god. I just…”

Silence that isn’t silent, not really, because Zoe can hear her own breathing and her heartbeat loud in her ears and who knew the living body was so noisy?

“I didn’t want any more blood,” says Audrey, shaking.

Zoe’s numb. Zoe’s on the ground beside another friend she’ll never speak to again, and she’s on the ground beside another friend who’ll never speak to her again, and she’s on the roof looking down at the ground, and she’s in the bathroom washing blood out of a hoodie, and she’s in the clubroom and the club is broken. They all are. Splintered, one by one. One by one by one by one.

Someone pounds on the door. “Zoe?” Max’s voice.

“Oh god,” Audrey repeats, and Zoe pushes past her to unlock the door.

“What happened?” Max says, and then he sees Issa. Zoe would give anything not to know what his expression looks like in this moment, in the discovery, in the realization. She looks away. Too late, too late.

Max sinks to the floor, takes Issa into his arms, adjusts her glasses where they’ve slipped down her nose. “No, no, no, no, no,” he keeps saying, until he runs out of air, but he’s wasting his breath; why is it that the heart, faced with pain, thinks it can hold it off by refusing? As though anything has ever been avoided for being unwanted. As though being loved could save Issa.

The heart is a violent, terrified creature, and Zoe’s is tearing itself to pieces. Max rocks back and forth, tears flowing freely, and presses his lips to Issa’s forehead. Audrey makes a noise one might describe as strangled.

“I’m calling the authorities,” says Zoe. Someone has to be responsible.

* * *

Later, it will almost be possible to forget that there was a murder in this room. Later, the club will form scar tissue around its missing, its lost, and it will be easier to laugh. Later, someone will tell a joke without the bitter pause before a response; the gaps in conversation will close, and the empty seats will be filled, and things will be almost as they were.

That’s what people say, isn’t it? Moving on, that’s the healthy thing to do, but moving in circles gets nobody anywhere and everyone in this club is tied to the same center. Like a black hole, this absence that has its own gravity, its own suffocating darkness without escape; galaxies form around black holes, but each star that gets tugged too close is torn to pieces and there’s no fighting its pull. There’s no fighting. There’s been enough fighting.

The club goes on.

* * *

Before Audrey’s taken away for questioning and before Zoe’s called to the station for testimony and before the trial and journalists and sentencing:

Before any of that.

Audrey’s sitting on a bench in handcuffs, staring at the willow tree; there’s an officer standing guard, waiting for something, it looks like, and Zoe nods as she walks past to join Audrey.

“What’re you doing?” hisses Audrey. “Get out of here!”

“It’s not your bench,” Zoe says.

Audrey scoffs. “This is my school,” she says, and it’s nearly the old Audrey, it’s nearly her, it’s nearly right again — but her voice wavers and the joke lands a little too flat, and it’s too easy to remember those hands on Issa’s neck.

Zoe must glance down, or flinch away, because Audrey sighs. Her shoulders sag, and it shouldn’t be this tempting to forgive her. But it’s  _ Audrey, _ of short skirts and high heels and laughter, of a million late-night discussions, of senior year and every year before it, one of Zoe’s oldest friends; it’s just Audrey, it’s just Audrey and Zoe’s shredded heart is still fighting.

“I can’t believe it either, you know,” Audrey says to her lap.

Zoe swallows. “What happened?”

A long silence.

“I don’t know.” Audrey tips her head back, closes her eyes. Lets the sun trace the lines of her face in gold like some kind of illuminated manuscript. She always did know how to look her best. “She was… It was all wrong. She was all wrong. I thought she was going to tell everyone.”

“Issa?” Zoe sees Audrey’s wince. “Tell everyone what?”

Audrey opens her eyes now, still looking upward, letting the sun in without blinking, without looking away. “You know. Come on, Zoe. Quit kidding yourself.”

Someone had to be responsible and maybe  _ someone _ was one and maybe it was two but one is gone now and the other going. Blood for blood for blood for blood, but if this is it, if this is the end… Maybe they can relearn how to catch their breath.

Zoe waits. Audrey says, very quietly, “I miss her.”

_ I do too, _ Zoe doesn’t say.  _ We all do. _ It’s obvious, and it wouldn’t help, and besides: Not like Audrey does. It doesn’t even matter which  _ her _ she means. Pick a body. Pick a dead friend. Grief, guilt, it’s all the same. The bloodied and the breathless. Accidents and reactions and overreactions.

“It all happened so quickly,” Zoe says, without meaning to.

“I got mad,” Audrey says, like she’s quoting someone. The words don’t fit her mouth right. “I got mad at her.”

Zoe looks at Audrey. “Are you crying?”

If this were last year, Audrey would say,  _ Of course not. _ She says nothing; she cries soundlessly. If this were last year, Zoe would pretend to believe the tears streaming down Audrey’s face are just her eyes watering from over-brightness. Audrey stares into the sky like she’s hoping the sun will burn her into something better. Lucy loved the sky, once.

Zoe leaves her to it.

* * *

The clubroom’s a crime scene, but Zoe ducks the yellow tape anyway, a small rebellion. The room’s quiet. Empty. It’s hard to imagine anybody ever claiming this space as their own, filling it with anything good. This was supposed to be their space. This was supposed to be better.

There will be more meetings. Somehow, they’ll continue. Clear away the mess and hide it under the rug, brush aside the cobwebs and wipe dirty fingers on skirts and blazers, and never again mention this chapter of their history. A blank space where names used to be. Silent until forgotten.

And Zoe can almost see Lucy helping Issa to her feet, Issa brushing off her skirt, Elena looping her arm through Issa’s and tugging her aside to whisper in her ear, the three of them laughing and vibrant, and more alive than anyone who still uses this room can remember being.


End file.
